Thursday, January 12, 2012

The long awaited 1.4.5 patch should be arriving on the PTS sometime today. This is a rather hefty patch since it includes the new Relic and Fortress system. Mythic posted the patch notes which come in at close to 2,500 words. The patch is all about Relics and the new Grovod Cavern scenario, so there isn't anything in the way of career changes.

Let's take a peek at some of the interesting parts.

Fortresses are all about Player-Initiated Defense. An Alliance willing to put their neck on the line is able to claim the Fortress and several all new ‘defense’ points.

Here they are trying something new and giving players a sandbox element. Fort raids can happen at any time no matter what the state of the campaign. It'll be interesting to see how players react.

Claiming a defensive point or the Fortress will also spawn banners that show the Guild banner for the Guild that claimed the area. Fly your flag proud!

Nice to see this feature back.

A Fortress Foreman spawns inside the Gatehouse, allowing any allied player to purchase Heavy Wood to repair damaged doors (which works the same as with Keeps); and a Fortress Door Field Kit, which will allow you to rebuild a destroyed door, bringing it back to a live and closed state, but with only 35% of its health.

This is a bit different than how Keep sieges work currently. Personally, I like it better than what we currently have.

While a relic resides in its home fortress, a Rally Flag will be available in each of the Warcamps of that pairing. The flag is located near each Warcamp’s healer and allows players to teleport directly to the fortress to defend the relic. The arrival location for the Rally Flag changes every few seconds to ensure attacking forces can’t predict the arrival. However, please be aware that if the attackers have breached the inner sanctum, the Rally Flag may be a dangerous way to enter the battle!

Interesting that it is all pairing based. Will it make it too easy for defenders to respond, or will it be just right to get some defensive presence there in time? We will see.

When the campaign has moved to the city siege, players may now queue and enter the city siege via the Scenario Queue window or by clicking on the appropriate City in the ‘RvR tracker’ available on the map.

Does this mean you no longer have to travel to the enemies city? Not sure how I feel about that. A lot of combat happened as a result of the traveling. On the other hand, it would be nice to get there quickly.